Eve Ensler has helped millions of women connect with their bodies. But it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with advanced uterine cancer that the award-winning playwright finally fully embraced her own.

In the process, The Vagina Monologues creator lost part of her vagina, along with all her other reproductive parts and more.

Her brush with death finally helped her heal from the abuse and incest inflicted by her father, and the resulting lifetime of self-abuse.

The Star caught up with her on tour for her new memoir, In the Body of the World.

Q:You were self-abusive for years. Was ignoring health symptoms part of that?

A: Of course. I talk about somnolence, when you’re not awake and not asleep. It’s interesting to look at how being in a state of somnolence is not only self-abusive, but abusive to the world. We don’t pay attention to what’s going on around us.

Q:What did cancer teach you about your body?

A: It brought me into my body. When you wake up after nine hours of surgery and you’ve had so many body parts removed, reconnected and replaced, you’re nothing more than a body. As painful and scary as it was, it was the first time I was really in my body. And that was the beginning. The irony of this whole journey is this disease of psychotically subdividing cells brought about unity and connection. It connected me to other people, to the earth in the deepest, truest way for the first time. It connected me with my sister, who I’d been separated with.

Q:Do you believe in “rape cancer,” that cancer cells are released by trauma?

A: I have to believe that trauma is in some way connected. I trust what comes up in dreams, metaphors and visuals. I also trust somatization, which is where you essentially project things into your body because your brain can’t tolerate it. Where do all the stress, terror, horror and despair go when you’ve been violated? We need to start doing studies to look at this. I’m looking at the cause, prevention and healing.

Q:You’ve come across unimaginable atrocities against women. Why did the Congo impact you so powerfully?

A: Hundreds of thousands, it not millions, of women being brutally raped and tortured. The scale; the scope. And the fact that these are militias coming in from other countries, Rwanda, Uganda, coming for minerals, destroying women, families and children’s bodies. There’s something so unimaginably brutal and greedy and horrible about it.

A: Women arrive from ages 14 to 40, with nightmares, bullet wounds, missing body parts. All have children at home, most of which were products of rape. They come to a place where they are loved, nurtured and educated. At the end of six months, they are transformed, and they go back to their communities, creating co-operatives and opening restaurants, speaking up to the government, speaking up for their rights and changing the traditions of their families. In five years we will have trained more than 1,000 women.

Q:What’s your view of death now?

A: I feel like I died. I’m going to do what I want to do, because it already happened. A lot of what I have is gratitude. When you come so close to dying, every day is a gift. You wake up and you can’t believe you get to be alive.

Q:What’s your advice for those newly diagnosed with cancer?

A: Allow yourself to have all your feelings. Find people who are going to be positive. I kept going for guides who would keep giving me ways to turn the experience into something that would heal me, rather than do me in.

Q:You turn 60 this month. How are you celebrating?

A: I’m going away with two of my closest friends and we’re just going to have a weekend, amidst this crazy (book) tour, by the ocean. We’re going to dance and be happy that we’re alive.

Ensler is speaking at the Toronto Reference Library Monday, May 13 at 7 p.m. Tickets are free, but must be acquired in advance at a.